Microsoft Wants to Invade Your Living Room with Xbox One

It connects, it’s alive, and will always remember you. It is the Xbox One, the next gaming console for Microsoft. Today, Microsoft revealed this next generation Xbox in an event titled Xbox Reveal via Xbox Live. The majority of the presentation was centered on the connection Xbox One will have to the users and it’s new look. The users voice will power on the console. The gestures of the user provide remote-less entertainment. The Xbox One will remember user history, trends, and favorites. It can connect the user with his/her friends, mostly through Skype, which is owned by Microsoft. It also contains “intelligent TV”; Users can watch live TV while using other apps included on the system and receive personal recommendations based on use. Intelligent TV caught my eye as it competes with TV services from competitors. Microsoft didn’t give substantial information about “intelligent TV”. I wasn’t sure if this was the official name or just a description on the upcoming Xbox TV. In order to provide live TV that is enticing enough to not use cable, Xbox would have to create a cable/TV subscription service (such service wasn’t mentioned).

Steven Spielberg has partnered with Xbox to create a live action series based on the popular game, Halo.  NFL also partnered up, allowing Xbox to provide more interaction during live games, including updating fantasy football stats.  The Kinect is more sensitive as its 1080p resolution interacts better with body and hand gestures. As the user becomes the controller and the console works to provide specific personal entertainment, Xbox One will collect 2 Gb of data every minute on its user to better know and build an entertainment guide for them.  Of course, Xbox also plugged its phone and tablet – both can interact as remotes to the console if hand gestures are too much.

For gaming, the console provides better performance records and the event introduced a few titles. Such titles, mostly sports games, were presented for the Xbox One gaming experience using the typical “gaming-has-become-better-only-if-you-use-this-console” mantra mentioned at all console upgrades. However, the one title thoroughly presented was Activision’s “Call of Duty: Ghosts”. Rather than presenting the game as exclusive to Xbox One, CEO Eric Hirshberg sold the game solely on its experience, from storyline to graphics.

The conclusion: This is about entertainment - Xbox wants to control your living room.

Xbox One was presented as an all-round (but it’s not another 360) entertainment console.  It’s your TV, your theatre, your social media, and your gaming console. Although, no mention of music.  Microsoft is on the same path as other companies; it wants to control almost everything in order to sell its one console above any other media device. The company believes being personal and via data gathering will help it sell better – “Human control for a human experience”. 

Microsoft must have spent plenty on it’s partnership with Spielberg, EA Sports, and the NFL in addition to the money to upgrade the Xbox from a mostly gaming console to a mostly entertainment console. So, Microsoft has put it all into Xbox One. If Xbox One fails, the surface, Windows 8, their phones cannot save them. If it succeeds, Microsoft will keep gamers and court media users – installing itself into homes as the next big entertainment system.

*For hardware stats, the first Xbox One is linked to the official site